Why Humanity is Valuable

ByDan October 5, 2025October 9, 2025 October 9, 2025

Humans matter.

They’re the most valuable single species on planet earth and its not even close.

I’m not saying this simply because I am a human and have a self-interested motive to preserve myself and the people that I love.

I genuinely believe our species to be significant in a potentially cosmic way (or at least a way that extends vastly beyond earth).

But why are humans valuable?

To answer this question, lets look at a lower stakes example of “value” in practice:

Why is the Chair Valuable?

Let us say you own a small furniture business. You’re passionate about design, working with wood and other materials, and you generally enjoy your work.

Over the years you’ve grown to 50 employees, and your firm offers over 100 products.

A huge amount of your profit has been generated from one specific design for a particularly beautiful, modern-looking wooden chair. The success of this chair alone represents well over half of your profits, and has permitted you to employ more people and in turn serve more customers.

This chair developed slowly through many progressively more successful designs – and the model you’ve arrived at now is clearly desired in the market. It looks sharp, you’ve figured out how to sell it well, and the modern design seems to be popular in coastal parts of the USA – with a reasonable demand in the UK as well.

Now we might ask the question: 

Why is this chair valuable?

Chair – Valuable In and of Itself

We might say that the chair is valuable in and of itself. 

Your furniture business team has used creativity, ingenuity, and a calibrated process of attuning to the market’s wants – all to arrive at a kind of “sacred” product, valuable not for the utility and beauty it serves for customers, valuable not for its contribution to your bottom line, but valuable simply for being itself.

In this case, the purpose of the business would be to keep alive the chair.

Maybe make small, incremental changes to it, but that chair alone would now be more important than anything else – even profitability.

Even if customer needs and preferences changed drastically, even if the materials that made the chair became too expensive to maintain profitability, even if new and more comfortable designs were created by other firms – we should continue to make, to uphold, and to preserve and expand this chair design for as long as possible.

Now, of course, that “as long as possible” might not be very long, because when market conditions (or supply chains, or customer preferences, or any other of the trillion variables in the dynamic system of the universe) change, we will lose money on making this chair, and eventually go bankrupt. With destruction and transformation being the only possible futures for any business, if we cut off the possibility of transformation (i.e. whatever transformations are necessary to stay profitable, i.e. alive), destruction is the inevitable result. 

Chair – Valuable as a Creator of Value

Or, maybe we could say the chair is valuable because it generates value.

In the case of your furniture business, “value” is profit – the very “stuff” that ensures future optionality for the business to stay alive.

But profit doesn’t fall from the sky. People pay for the chair because they believe they’ll get “value” (utility, beauty, etc) from the chair.

And the “value” (profit) you see in terms at your furniture store, is not just to be spent on ice cream, or to be thrown in a vault so you can swim in it like Scrooge McDuck (believe it or not, that’s not what business owners typically do with their profit). 

First off, you’ll pay a lot more in taxes to the greater societal system, but after that, profit allows you to hire more people and better equipment. It allows you to develop and prototype new designs – not just for chairs but for all kinds of furniture and accessories – many new kinds of things that could be “valuable” to the wider market (including many future products you can’t even now imagine).

In this case, that process of “creativity, ingenuity, and attuning to the market’s wants” wasn’t a one-time thing, its an ongoing process that you’re continually engaged in.

If the chair is valuable so long as it creates value, then you certainly will continue creating it, but you’ll be totally open to changing it, and to creating many new products, knowing that you won’t get any chances to create more chairs (or more of anything else at all) if you’re bankrupt. We ought ensure that the value that the chair represented (the artistry, the resonance with the market, ultimately – the profit) carries on even if the specific form of that specific chair won’t be around forever.

Why is Humanity Valuable? 

Let us say now that you’re the process of biological life itself.

(Abstract, I know, but stay with me.)

Over a few billion years you’ve grown to develop many different life forms – some parasites, some predators, some prey, some mobile, some immobile, etc. Each is its own part in an ongoing process. All of them are transforming or dying off all the time – all of them are a kind of metabolic process, not a static “thing.”

But you have this bipedal group of mobile life forms you’ve bubbled up – and they’re truly extraordinary. 

As they use a variety of written and spoken ways of communication, they have many names for themselves, including “humans”. They’ve been able to learn much more about nature, and to coordinate with other bipeds (governance systems, cultures, etc) and other living things in very unique ways (agriculture, animal domestication, etc).

Even though all things are a changing processes, these bipeds have named some of your metabolic processes “species” in order to categorize and refer to them. They also generally have names for other temporary and changing phenomenon such as the flow of water to the ocean (“rivers”). It seems that from their perception and experience of time, these kinds of fleeting distinctions are often useful.

There are now over eight billion-or-so of these bipeds. While they are causing a variety of detrimental impacts to the greater ecosystem (space debris, an ocean full of plastics, etc), they are also remarkably capable of generating new powers and abilities. 

They teach each other with language and culture, and they continually extend their powers with a variety of tools – putting them at the vanguard of nature’s greater expanding set of powers (at least for Earth life). They have a chance of expanding themselves to other planets (many of which they’ve named, of course), and they’re building capable machines which are already starting carry the expanding process of life beyond biology.

They’re also capable of a wonderful number of experiences. Not only are they self-aware in a way that is much more profound and rich than other life forms, they’re capable of many variety of qualia, such as love, enthusiasm, laughter, awe, and many more.

Now we might ask the question: 

Why is humanity valuable?

Humanity – Valuable In and of Itself

We might say that humanity is valuable in and of itself.

Myriad natural processes worked for billions of years to bumble up through many atmospheric conditions on earth, many kinds of ecologies, and a number of significant volcanic and asteroid-related events, to conjure forth one kind of “sacred” singular species, valuable not because of its rich sentient experience and understanding of itself and its world, valuable not for its contribution in the form of expanding the known powers of Earth life, valuable simply for being itself.

In this case, the purpose of this evolving, expanding natural process of Earth life would be to keep humans alive.

Maybe some small evolutionary changes to humans would be okay, but they alone would now be more important than anything else – even more important than the greater evolving progress of the broader process of life itself.

Even if environmental conditions or emergent demands on life changed such that survival would better be achieved by different or more powerful types of life – we would want to ensure that preserving and making more of this one species is still the highest objective for as long as possible.

Now, of course, that “as long as possible” might not be very long, because when environmental conditions or the emergent ecosystem of life and forces on life inevitably change, humanity may be buffered out of existence. With destruction and transformation being the only possible futures for any species, if we cut off the possibility of transformation (i.e. whatever transformations are necessary to stay alive), destruction is the inevitable result. 

Humanity – Valuable as a Creator of Value

Or, maybe we could say that humanity is valuable because it generates value.

In the case of humanity, “value” could be seen as sentience (that faculty that allows us to experience life itself), and – most importantly – expanding the edge of the total set of powers (potentia) that Earth life has to keep itself alive.

(Note: If you have a different idea of the qualities of “value,” you can place your own ideas into this same example and the thought experiment works the same. This analogy is extrapolated in much more detail in The Business of Value essay.)

This value is far from arbitrary. A species that extends the set of powers that allow life to persist (in the case of humans: by understanding nature, by developing technologies that allow humans to live in various climates, to potentially expand life to Mars, to build new kinds of digital intelligence, etc) helps to keep the whole process of life alive.

And this “value” (sentience, the expansion of potentia) that humans create doesn’t just serve to make humans happier, it gives life itself a chance to flourish in greater ways. Already humans are tinkering with genetics, creating digital intelligences, and augmenting their own minds.

The expansions of life and power allow the greater process of life to continue forward to new forms, even more capable to keeping life’s flame alive, just as humanity came before previous mammals, and previous vertebrates before those mammals.

In this case, that bubbling, evolving process of life that formed the single cell, and adapted those single cells to form multicellular organisms, and endure disasters and new conditions, and find its way through the spires of form to humanity – wasn’t just a thing that led to humans, but is a thing that is continuing and unfolding through us now.

If humanity is valuable so long as it creates value – and if it is the very pinnacle example of sentience and potentia-expansion – and if we don’t quite understand those crucial traits of sentient and potentia-expansion yet – then we absolutely want to make sure not to stumble beyond humanity too quickly and lose those crucial traits in some ill-fated, reckless attempt to conjure AGI too early (i.e. the creation of an unworthy successor is indeed a bad thing).

But we ought be aware of the necessary transformations ahead. We ought ensure that the value that humans represent carries on even if the human form does now.

Why is Anything Valuable?

The easiest way to discuss the nature of value is this:

This is no value if there are no subjective observers (or worse, no living processes that could ever bubble up into subjective observers). No life means no value. Life means the possibility of current value (the most obvious, human-accessible current value seems to be positive qualia), and the conjuring forth of new, unfolding magazines of value beyond present imagination (the unfolding of potentia).

Hence, in order for any kind of subjective value to exist (i.e. something seeming “valuable” to some observer), something must be alive.

Hence, what is objectively valuable is the living, ongoing process of ensuring that living “stuff” stays alive.

The examples above get to the heart of what I suspect value to be.

Merriam Webster defines Valuable word in static terms: Having desirable or esteemed characteristics or qualities.

We might define it in a better and more accurate way:

Valuable (adjective) – Something that promotes the long-term creation of more value.

Value is not static, and attempting to preserve value in a static form is ultimately fruitless. 

Value is always becoming, because it is valuable only to living things, which are themselves processes constantly adapting and changing in the dynamic system of this universe of ours.

Value flows and contributes into the stream of life, it doesn’t sit in a stagnant, fleeting eddy.

Value is part of the spreading flame of life, it lies not in a comfortable and dying ember.

If the flow of new powers and experience in the grand expanse of life were ever to completely stop (i.e. all living things die), all possible value would be eliminated. If the grand flame of life expands with new powers, new kinds of experience, new levels of access to nature, then value itself (a becoming process) might continue to unfold and unfold – is it has for many billions of years.

You might expect Peter Singer, the consummate utilitarian, to say that eh would hope that future posthuman life would optimize only for bliss. But he doesn’t. Even he would want future posthuman life to optimize for (a) sentient wellbeing, (b) developing more powers (potentia) to keep itself alive and might even open up new kinds of potential value beyond sentience (watch Singer’s interview on The Trajectory).

I repeat, for emphasis:

Valuable (adjective) – Something that promotes the long-term creation of more value. 

I’m sure you have some questions and objections, so I’ll do my best to address some of the more common ones:

FAQs

“So humanity is just some arbitrary process to be overcome, huh? So we should just replace humans with robots and let the AI take over tomorrow, is that what you’re saying, Dan?”

Absolutely not.

As I mentioned at the very start of this article, I believe ardently that humans are valuable. 

But I believe firmly that looking at humanity and value as processes rather than as static or ossified terms.

We already know to treat businesses, technology, and the sciences as processes (hence why it was somewhat ridiculous and humorous to talk about creating a “sacred” chair, and it would be ridiculous to think of any kind of “final” physics theorem), but historically the timelines for biological evolution have been so slow as to make it practical for us to think of ourselves as a static thing.

But timelines are speeding up.

I’ve argued in Short Human Timelines for many inner and outer forces of destruction and transformation (including AGI and brain-computer interface) that are already pressing on us, forcing us to accept a transition to posthuman life within the next 10-30 years.

My position comes not from wanting to change for change’s sake.

My position comes from believing that change is probably going to happen in a big way in the near-term, and we must be ready to adapt with it.

The “bathwater” of the human form and present human civilization is getting dumped out the window soon, and I urge us to make sure the “baby” (the value we represent and carry forward) is not lost with it. Humanity should aim to keep the reins until we have a robust confidence in 

…

“Okay so lets say all is process and the greater process is speeding up. What do you want us to do about that, Dan? What do you think is best from here?”

This means we must both work to prevent catastrophes that would destroy life (most importantly, humanity, which sits on the vanguard of life’s powers), and we must work to understand. I believe these twin goals to be our final imperatives:

I fight every week towards stopping the AGI race, and towards putting more attention on understanding consciousness and intelligence itself (see interviews with Levin, Boyden).

If human timelines are short and change is coming soon (or even if this is reasonably likely), then we should identify the “baby” (value) in the “bathwater” (human form, human civilization), because when the bathwater empties out, we’d want the baby to live on. 

We – as a process – presently embody some extremely valuable traits at the vanguard of life’s known powers, and we should not risk any kind of technology wave that might put out our own torch unless we’re nearly certain that the new wave will cary the flame further than we can.

I suspect that trying to stop this process is impossible insomuch as it implies stopping the greater unfolding process of life (or eternally determining the future behavior of vastly posthuman intelligences) and potentially immoral insomuch as it demands resources handed to humans which might be used more fruitfully to bloom vastly posthuman powers and value into the universe (see The Path of Servitude vs Blooming).

… 

“So you really like this idea of replacing humans? You just wake up in the morning and enjoy knowing that humanity will one day end – and so long as its ‘worthy’ this idea just brings you joy?”

It took me three years of mulling these issues over to arrive at what I think is acceptance of human attenuation. But it was a lot of bargaining (and a bit of depression) to get here – the same stages of grief people experience with other kinds of loss. Emerson was right to say that we resist and often hate this reality of all being a process. I’m no exception, it was, and sometimes still is, hard of me to swallow.

People often frame my take as a kind of click-your-heels cheerfulness about the end of mankind. Wall Street Journal tried to frame my position this way, and I didn’t appreciate it.

My position involves no heel-clicking optimism. I think most successors are unworthy – and most of the reckless ways to can conjure posthuman intelligence in the world might destroy the flame, rather than expand it. I do not sing and dance into the apocalypse, I am attempting to snap humanity to attention about the necessity of change.

At times I face the future mostly with determination for what could be a positive transformation, but at other times, my position is one of gritting my teeth and looking honestly at what is happening in this dynamic system of a universe of ours, knowing there are no guarantees.

In nature, those things survive which are able to behoove their own interests and participate in the greater process, and though religion (going beyond the veil of tears, escaping Samsara, etc) promises escape from this condition, I suspect that it cannot be escaped and our role is to participate in its continual becoming.

In no way does this soothe me. But I’d rather swallow uncomfortable truths than ignore them and be hit over the head by them. In Emerson’s words, in his greatest essay: “People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

I would like vastly more time to get this transition right – and I’d like more time so that I and the other humans I love could live long healthy lives. Maybe that means I value those people’s lives “in and of themselves,” and I suppose I do. I’m a human after all. And I’ve had to mourn not only the end of my own life, but the eventual attenuation of man. But I do find meaning in the greater process of which I am part continuing onward, and that would seem to me to be a noble contribution of human kind to life itself.

Alas.

It is possible to love a business, to some of the products it has developed, and also to encourage it to move onward to new products and new activities as the market requires it. 

It is possible to love a species, to cherish many of its traits and powers, and also to encourage it to move onward to new forms and new substrates as the dynamic system of the universe demands it.

(Still angry? Read: If You Have to Kill Me. This article was written for a friend.)